Over the past few years the blogging community has well and truly made its mark on the internet. With an estimated 172 million Tumblr and 75.8 million WordPress blogs in 2014, the figures speak for themselves. Although this means there’s a huge variety of blogs available for you to read, it makes it difficult for upcoming bloggers to stand out in the crowd. Here are our top five tips on how to make your blog the crème de la crème of the bloggersphere.
1) Know your Unique Selling Point: When you set up a blog you are opening up a little bit of your personality to the internet. Be it your quirky sense of style, alternative photography skills or your unique writer’s voice, it is important to find your distinctive element that will keep readers coming back. Your USP will be the backbone of your blog and if you keep the theme going, your blog will be noted for its character. So whether you’re a plus size blogger who wants to break the boundaries, a beauty blogger with beautiful freckles that you want to show off or even just have a really sarcastic sense of humour that you want to share, play to your strengths and you’ll find people enjoy your content more.
2) Have a catchy name: Your blog name is an essential part of your brand as a blogger so it’s important that you have a memorable one. The content of your blog should be reflected in your username. For example, if you are a fashion blogger think of synonyms of fashion to help you generate a unique and catchy title. It is also a good idea to keep your usernames for your social media platforms either the same as your blog name or as close as possible so it is easy for readers to find you.
3) A picture paints a thousand words: No matter what the theme of your blog, photographs will be essential to help readers understand what you are trying to say. Using other people’s images without accrediting them is a big no-no, so using original photographs is a better idea. Use natural lighting and clean, attractive backdrops to give your photos a professional edge. You don’t have to have the best camera in the world to take good photographs, just keep it simple and make sure the subject of the image is clear and easy to see.
4) Generate unique content: Although blogging is a hobby that reflects you as a person, if you create unique content that will find viewers will take an interest. Talking about subjects that are relevant to today’s news stories or recent media highlights will likely be of interest to those who you share posts with as everyone likes to know what is going on in the world. Conversely, if you blog about something very unique, different and eye-catching, your audience is bound to be intrigued. Stuck for blog ideas? Create a series like What I Wore Wednesday for fashion bloggers, showcasing their outfits every Wednesday or Sunday Bake-off for food bloggers who have a Sunday afternoon recipe for those stuck in on a rainy day.
5) Social Media is everything: You can have the most amazingly written, fantastic looking blog in the world but without social media you aren’t likely to gain readership. Twitter is a fantastic tool for all bloggers and it is beneficial to know which hashtags are followed by certain blog themes (e.g. #bbloggers for beauty bloggers, #fbloggers for fashion bloggers). Another useful Twitter tool is weekly conversations which occur between bloggers where a hashtag is used to communicate a topic surrounding a particular blog type an hour each week. Find out these niches and get yourself communicating with other bloggers to kick-start your blog following. Facebook pages are also useful if you keep posting content to them daily, but this tends to take a little more work. Furthermore, you can have an Instagram for your account to show more about your life to your followers when you’re not blogging, a Google Plus page to share updates and even a LinkedIn page to show you off as a business. Bloglovin’ is also a fantastic tool for readers to follow you on as it updates readers when a new post is on your blog. Master all of these tools and your audience is guaranteed to grow.